Depends on how the class works. But I think the record of other such classes speaks for itself: Those that would play such a class would be a vast minority, and even those, would still insist on that class having a different build that was able to *do* damage.

Assuming you mean that they'd literally not have any damage abilities whatsoever... then not in a game like WoW, because solo play (which makes up a large portion of the game) would be impossible. In a different game where you're grouped at all times I could see myself playing such a class. I don't particularly enjoy pew pew.

I'd always thought about a Priest tanking spec; not through armor, but by massively debuffing the enemy's damage output enough to take it. It would be tricky to balance, but honestly it would be cool to see.

In order to solo such a class, you'd need a radically different way of doing things. Maybe mobs would have a sanity or a mind stat you could attack? Ah, but then that's damage by another name. Could you debuff to zero stamina maybe? Mind control another mob as a damage pet?

In theory it's an awesome idea, in practice you'd either be mandatory (nobody else can do what you do, and you need to do what you do exactly right or the boss won't die) or redundant (your buffs and debuffs amount to an increase in raid DPS equivalent to adding another DPSer).

In the first case, everybody would resent having this new class foisted on them, in the second case, nobody would want to risk the unknown quantity when they could just take moar DPS.

Basically how fun it was to play would depend very much on the extent to which encounters were designed with your class in mind.

Such a class would be incredibly hard to balance in WOW as it stands. If the buffs were equivalent to one more DPS in 25 man raiding, the class would be unwanted in 5 and 10 man content and hence impossible to gear up. If you balance around 5-mans, it would be OP in a raiding context.

It wasn't too bad in WoW between lvl 20 and 80 really, but there is still a lot of forced-soloing before and afterwards. Most folk don't even notice, don't think twice about it, can't even imagine that it's an issue but it's extremely hard even for a healer to avoid tedious solo grinds, usually obscure rep ones like the Kaluak.

So forcing the issue would work really well for me as I wouldn't be pushed into tedious soloing as I'd HAVE to find a group and it would be justifiable to everyone, whereas you try finding a group to kidnap snow-pups in WoW. Go on. Everyday until exhalted. Or try LF1M Jewellcrafting Daily!

No damage? No, that just isn't good game design. Assuming Blizzard would try to balance the class, they would have to give HUGE incentives to play the class, find players willing to hold your hand as you level, and so forth.

The class would have to give parties/raids huge advantages to makeup for the loss of a tank and/or healer and/or dps (we can't assume, because the new class doesnt damage, it therefore tanks or heals.)

But it isn't practical. But there can be "adjustments" to make things similar. What if Warlocks' damage ONLY came from DoTs? What if mages could only aoe? What if warrior tanks did no damage in defensive stance?

You can add elements, but you have to be creative with raid utility.

However, small group team strats can work. Recently in 4v4 Starcraft 2 matches, one of our players, usually a protoss, only builds defenses and gives his resources to other players to produce units. Now, he doesnt want to be relegated to that role every time, but the option adds vertatility.

This idea is entirely workable but not in the context nearly everyone seems to be thinking of. People seem stuck on the idea that a buff class has to have immensely powerful raid wide buffs when the obvious implementation is simply single target buffs.

The class could have many short duration single target buffs to cast so that they are always doing things. For example:

Obviously to make this viable for soloing the class would have to have personal attack spells too, but when soloing they could just stack all their buffs on themselves and be pretty reasonable if balanced right. You would also want to build a lot more interactivity into their buffs with procs and synergies but these took me 10 seconds to think up.

I don't think that Blizzard will actually implement this sort of thing because it would be even more difficult to balance than another more traditional class but there is no reason that the idea couldn't work and be fun for both soloing and raiding. Most likely this class would be a little worse at soloing than most dpsers are, but it would be easy to make sure they are as good as a tank or healer.

I like the idea of "synergy abilities" better. Spec a bit into the synergy tree and you get abilities that boost other's abilities.

But you don't just buff and sit on your duff. You must use the ability in conjunction with the DPS/tank/healer player's abilities. Focusing a cast time, for instance. Amplifying a taunt. Increasing the radius of an AOE attack.

Would require communication and strategy, working together with a particular player. And of course they would have a few points in the tree as well, so it becomes a real dance.

as long as there was a way of measuring the effectiveness. It's like Disc priests and someone without the damage absorbed add on thingy for recount. " You suck as a healer. Omg.. " and then they link their damage absorbs to show you how much damage they prevented from happening.

@Mike: Perhaps leveling as a giant XP sink would stay, but quests would need to be radically redesigned and expanded to accomodate them.

@Lanashara: I've not played EQ, but I'll think about that.

@Chastity: Redundancy could be an issue, but would fit nicely into the "bring the player, not the class". I don't know about "foisting a new class", I mean, we all love DKs.

@Sven: I'm imagining some sort of "diluted power" debuff, such that in a 5-man you might give (made up numbers for my poorly considered idea) a 25% damage buff, but the 25 raid dilutes it to a mere 5%.

@Abberon: Forced soloing, I've not thought much of that as a concept, but I suppose it's truish.

@Wiggin: While the Starcraft example sounds nice, as a general rule PvP seems to encourage more innovation.

@Sky: You nailed it: This can't be a "fire and forget" buffing class. It needs to be something people play.

@pugnaciouspriest: If Blizzard adds their own DPS meter it should be trivial to add a "100 damage (25 from superpower buff)". Basically give us a little bit of the mechanics behind damage calculations by going one step back.